To new beginnings!

I’ve been putting off this post for a while, maybe simply because I don’t want to have to deal with the thought yet. But WordPress persuaded me today, saying, “Write a post about something that should’ve been left untouched, but wasn’t. Why was the original better?”

Well, my entire life is about to change this month. For the past year, I’ve had a daily schedule; I’ve been able to tick things off a list that I made at the beginning of the year. It’s been mostly filled with work at Deccan Chronicle. The year actually flew by, but it has perhaps been the most fruitful year in my life, in terms of work and personal life. Su and Anand lived one kilometre away from my house. My Friday nights were almost always spent with them. I interviewed a few awesome people and grew close as ever to Nuvena, Sneha and Zoya. And I have to now bid goodbye to all of these people.

If you don’t already know, I have quit my job at Deccan Chronicle and have 11 days left there. So that means I won’t be seeing these silly girls, Nuvena, Sneha and Zoya, everyday. Sunayana is going to be in Orissa for a year, starting tomorrow, and Anand is going to Chicago for maybe two years. The thing is, I’m used to living away from my sister. For six years, she was away, studying, and for a year, she was in Amsterdam. But now, I’ve grown surprisingly close to Anand and having them both away, might be an extra pain to deal with and I don’t want to come to terms with it. They are my gang! No matter what my problem is, I go to them. “Should I quit?” “Should I buy these pants?” “Should I change the poster in my room?” “Should I put pickle in my curd rice?” You get the gist.

I don’t think the change of circumstances ever makes a difference in one’s life. It’s the people. It’s always the people. And I had gotten too comfortable with these people.

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I suppose getting too comfortable with a phase in one’s life callsfor a change. We are all excited about change. By ‘we,’ I mean Su, Anand and I. Su is in Orissa to help in rural development. Anand is off to USA from work, which means alone time in a new country, which is always a good thing. And I’m looking to write and travel as much as I can before I settle into another job. Maybe that’s what has gotten me all jittery. I’ve always been like Jenny from Marley & Me. The organised-kind with life plans and a bucket list to follow. Right now, I have absolutely nothing to organise because I don’t know where my life is headed! I’m so confused. On the one hand, I have people asking me “What next?” every time they see me. And on the other, I have my own mind asking me to take things easy, and take up whatever comes at me. I’ve always been told to listen to my mind, by my mind.

This looks like a silly diary entry, with nothing for my reader to take away. I know. But I have to set these thoughts free, and make some space in my mind, you know. Because every little thing is changing.

The left side shift key on this keyboard isn’t working. It has always worked and now it isn’t.

I hope that’s the only bad change out of everything I have mentioned in this post.

All in all, I’m looking forward to 2015. Supriya is coming back in January (hopefully). Sunayana is going to visit in January. I may go to Orissa to visit her. I may go to Shillong to visit Priyam. I may travel to Chennai, Pondi, Kerala and who knows where else!

But I’m going to miss the perfect past year. The nights at 1522, the gossip lunch time in the pantry at office, making tea with Nuvena, riding back with Sneha, drinking chai at the adda, staying over at Su’s where we always fell asleep trying to do something constructive, making plans to go for runs regularly and failing, going for movies, watching the matches together, watching Su and Anand argue about BJP (and watching Su shed a tear when he insulted Modi), attending parties where pretentious people came and waved their hands about at each other… Wait, I really don’t think I’m going to miss that last bit.

Su and Anand, just for the record, I love the team that the three of us are. (If I say anything more cheesy, I think Anand might remove me from the MVM Rowdies Whatsapp group.)

 

Anyway, cheers to new beginnings!

*Deep breath*

 

 

 

Happy Birthday Navu!

She’s turns 32 today. She looks perhaps as old as me or a couple years older. She is a doting mother of two. She is a teacher. She is a farmer. She is a fun cousin. A caring sister. A loving wife. A perfect daughter. A daughter-in-law who can’t mingle better into another family. Above all, she is someone you can’t possibly dislike, even if you try. These are her nine facets. My friends call her ‘nine-gems’ because that’s easier to say. Her name is Navarathna.

Yes, we know we look freakishly alike!

This is my cheap way of giving her a birthday gift since I can’t meet her today. I haven’t even spoken to her yet. But she is likely to call me herself by the end of this post, sniffing, teary eyed and fussing and complaining about how it made her cry. Navu, as we call her, is ten years older than me. She was my sister’s best friend when they grew up, often getting their houses mixed up, with Hrishi tottering along behind them (I’m guessing). They played together, took part in fancy dress competitions together and shared each other’s secrets. Of course I know nothing of these incidents. I’m just recollecting the many photo albums I’ve seen. I know they’d share secrets, because as an nagging six or seven-year-old I’d walk into a room when they were (very seriously) discussing that cute guy across the road they called ‘Maddy’ or that “friend” that other cousin hung out with too much or just the routine pains of being a woman, and they’d throw me out of the room because I’d probaby rat out to our parents what they were talking about, or just let me be because I’d not understand their discussions. Although I don’t remember anything from my childhood, I know from what I’ve been told that Navu brought me up like I was her own. She’d take me out of the house, prop me up on the bonnet of a car and make me eat. She was the one person, on whose coming home, I’d delightfully shriek and run and jump onto, like I was a weightless toy.

Navu is someone who has always been there, no matter what. No, it’s not like I call her up when I’m low and pour out my secrets and sorrows to her. But somehow – maybe I’ve always taken her for granted – I have never given a thought to how much she makes a difference in my life. For as long as I met her too often, I was too dumb a kid to understand things and when I was growing up and transforming into the wonderful woman that I am today, she was away in Canada and Mysore. But I look back into my old diaries and see that I’ve made notes about Navu leaving to US and me crying, and me being thrilled about her shifting back to India and happy about her having had a baby. Athough she hasn’t been around too much in the later years, she has been there at the back of my head, telling me what to do and what not to do.

Navu ploughing. Like a boss.

Now, on every occasion that I meet her, I’m mind blown by how enterprising she is and how courageous she is. The last time I was in Mysore, she called me out of the house, took my help to load a bunch of vegetables she grew in her farm into the vehicle and drove to the vegetable shop. It was not any other car she drove. It was a mini truck! How many pretty women do you come across driving a goods vehicle! She went cheerfully to the organic vegetable store, sold the produce to him and smoothly walked out of the store after shaking hands with him when she had struck a good deal. Like a boss! She is just too cool.

And I have never seen better parenting skills. You can’t possibly do a better job with two daughters. Her family is like a repetition of my family. Dad, mum and two daughters who are seven years apart. And you’ll be shocked at how similar the older kid is to my sister and the younger kid, to me. It’s uncanny. The thing is, although Navu is my cousin, I think of her like my own elder sister. She somehow knows me too well. She has always been there, reading every piece of crap I write, commenting on every picture I click and watching every move I make in my life.

Gosh! See! I’ve taken her so much for granted that I haven’t realised that it was her who got me into photography! I mean that’s such a big part of who I am! I’d see pictures she clicked and more than being inspired by the pictures she clicked (no offense), I was inspired by the fact that a woman can do it! Although Sunayana has always been there, shaping me, Navu has been silently playing her role too. My sister never rode a bike or clicked pictures, I’m talking about such tiny things that turn into a big deal. Navu always rode a bike, she’d take me out in the bike everytime I went to her house in Bangalore. We’d go to Shetty angadi and buy Boomer or go to Najundeshwara to buy some provisions or to Ayodhya bakery or to borrow a CD from that shop. (Whoa! I didn’t even know I had memories of these places)!

See, I think Navu knows about me in a way no one else would.  She probably doesn’t even know that. Most of the time, I’m wearing her clothes. Heck I’m wearing her t-shirt right now! And since she’s lost weight, she’s flicking clothes from me as well. Very honestly, she is an inspirational woman. What I like about her the most is how she loves people and gives them a sense of belonging. I love how she coos “gayathri maamiiii uppittu beku” or “Raamiiii hogolo!” or “Eh kothi baare illi” or “Sunuu I miss you yaa!” Just by the way she calls out to you, you know that she loves you! It’s easier said than done, to love everyone. Although it seems like such a simple thing, I think it’s really hard and she’s one of the purest people I know.

Navu, I know this does absolutely no justice at all to anything! It’s just a thoughtful couple of hours dedicated to you. I love you ya.

PS: I wrote this post so that, the next time you come Navu, you actually bring me cake instead of what’s apping pictures to me. :-x (Also, call me up now, with a bit of sniffing and sobbing, otherwise facepalm moment will happen). : P

 

 

Fire! Fire! That’s my CAR!

This is not a fiction story. Last night there was a big fire outside my house and like a cheap journalist, I’m ripping the night’s event as a story idea, and writing a blog post about it. (Of course, I don’t have a picture of it, because I’m not that cheap a journalist to not to anything about the fire and stand clicking pictures, especially when it’s my car that’s about to catch fire). Anyway.

Every night, my dad comes home from the garage at 9 thirty, after fixing all the bikes and an occasional car. We have dinner watching TN Seetharam‘s never ending TV serials. It used to be Mayamruga whenI was 11, then Manvanthara, then Muktha, then Minchu, then Muktha Muktha and now it’s Maha Parva. It has been the same routine forever, except the number of people sitting at the dining table has changed (now it’s minus my grandma and my sister, who is married and watching Times Now, during dinner, instead), and the names of the serial itself, although the content is pretty much the same.

Anyway, so we had a peaceful dinner, followed by my dad lying on the sofa, increasing the volume on TV, my mum increasing her own volume, yelling and asking him to reduce the volume, me just sitting and reading Three Men in a Boat. Just day-to-day stuff, you know. I told my mum something was burning and my mum checked the stove and said there was nothing on it. I shrugged and stuck my nose back into my book. Suddenly, someone began banging at our main door. We all looked at the door and for a second, just sat and looked. The rest of the story is as follows:

Mom: Who do you think it is? At this hour?

(We all turn to look at the clock, which is set 25 minutes late, so it just gives us the feeling that it’s always late. The clock presently showed 11 pm, which is really late for someone to come knocking, by our standards)

Me: I don’t know. Maybe Sunayana. Because who else would bang the door like that?

I open the door. It’s the man who lives opposite to our house, Murali uncle, shirtless, with a surprisingly big paunch and clad in a lungi and no chapplis.

Murali uncle: Nim car benki hathkond urithaide! (You car is ablaze!)

My dad jumps off the sofa, flinging his hands in shock, tossing a bunch of things off the centre table, that fall making a loud clinging, clattering noise. My mum, almost in tears and a pained look, gasps. I wordlessly run after Murali uncle, down the staircase outside and onto the road where our car is parked. From the staircase itself I could see an orange glow on the road outside. I thought Oh shit! Please don’t go boom car! because of course I’m concerned about people’s safety more than the red Maruthi Esteem itself.

My cool car

So yeah, I ran out and saw my car. I could see the left side of the car, there was no fire on that side. On the other side was a growing fire, taller than the car itself and it was burning with all its might. I wasn’t wearing chappli and was too shocked to go close to the car. For what felt like ten minutes (although it was hardly two seconds), I stood with my palms clasping my jaw-dropped face. My dad ran towards the car to see what could be done.

Then suddenly it stuck me out of nowhere. WATER! I always thought that during emergencies, I’ll absolutely forget what to do. But water came to my mind instinctively. I was so proud of myself. My mum was still on her way out of the house, when I ran back, fetched a full bucket of water and took it to my dad, still with no slippers. This time, I went all the way to the other side of the car and saw for myself. The car was completely fine. Phew! (Thu you cheap bastards were hoping the story was going to be epic with a full blown disaster eh? As much as you’d like to read about such things, I wouldn’t write a blog post about such a disaster. I’d be distraught and beside myself in agony. I have left a very nice Bodyshop lip gloss in the back seat of my car). The fire was growing less than an inch away from the car and had Murali uncle been late by five minutes, the car would’ve been a wreck.

All my neighbours ran out of their houses, a few with buckets slopping with water and a few just to look and exclaim a loud “Haw! Kai zala?” or “Kasan zala?” or “Aiyo! Enna Natantatu!” It took us around 15-20 minutes to put the fire out. We didn’t need to call a fire truck or anything. My car was safe and the fire was out, all 15 neighbours, strolled back inside the compound in twos and threes, discussing what might have happened.

“You know! Three boys came running inside the compound, and hid in that corner house! We got scared and shut the door when we saw them pa! Maybe it was them!” contemplated a Rajani atthya. (These titles like ‘atthya,’ ‘moushi’ and ‘kaka’ become universal terms when one of the youngsters in the compound calls their aunts/uncles that. So Uttara’s Shubadha moushi is moushi for everyone. Pranjali’s Rajini atthya is atthya for everyone). The mystery of who started the fire still remains unresolved but my dad is being extra cautious and planning to install a CCTV camera outside the house. (Damn! I can’t be sneaky anymore!)

The whole experience was like one of those fire drills that happen in office spaces. We all worked efficiently together and avoided a crazy mishap all thanks to Murali uncle’s misinformation about the car already being on fire. Everyone went back inside and continued watching TV, talking, arguing and I stuck my nose back into my book.

Stay cautious everyone.
Until next time.